Just a Reaction
by happyharper13
Summary: The sterile latex gloves had shrouded her in objectivity, at the expense of her own humanity. But now, as her fingernail followed worried lines down the soft, organic skin of her own hand, Sara Sidle could finally feel something -- she finally felt alive.


Author's Note: This was originally part of 'Stress Fractures,' before I realized that Sara didn't quite fit in there. So, instead, I have a oneshot. This takes place shortly after Sara's departure in S8, and definitely before S9, as I know she's reached a happier place by S9. Any suggestions for a better title would be greatly appreciated. I wrote this a while ago, and I honestly don't remember if this story was betaed along with other parts of SF. If it seems typo-free, then it probably was, in fact, betaed (by PisceanPal23). If there are typos, then it's unbetaed. Enjoy!

* * *

**Just -- Logically, Scientifically -- a Reaction**

Sara Sidle backed out of the hotel parking lot. She was getting slightly bored of wandering aimlessly. She kept postponing the drive. With every hotel, she found an excuse to stay just a little longer. Every trip to the local convenience store could be extended as she browsed through every aisle, reading the price per ounce on any item deemed vaguely useful to a single – at least living single for now, she reminded herself – thirty-something woman.

She was grateful to still be on such odd hours. The roads were fairly clear as she drove – one of her longtime favorite perks of working nights – and she rarely had to worry about lines at any store she went to. In Vegas, a lot was going on 24 hours a day. She chuckled as she recalled having a similar conversation with Greg.

_"Why do we always come to this diner?" she had asked._

_"Open 24 hours." He replied with a grin._

_"Everything in Vegas is open 24 hours," she smartly replied._

_"It's cheap."_

It had seemed like a reasonable enough excuse at the moment. She couldn't decide whether or not she missed that 24-hour Vegas day. Driving down the highway, she felt like she was living in a ghost world. So few people were out and about.

Relatively empty street expanses stretched before her as her car meandered down the lonely, peaceful road.

Seeing a convenience store at the next exit, she prepared to turn. She wasn't sure why it was that she stopped every time she found one. It wasn't like there was any more that she needed. _Everything_ required for her meager, lonely existence-of-the-moment was packed up into the trunk of the car she had bought at the airport.

She needed a road trip to sort out her feelings – a nice, long road trip – not a three-hour plane ride. And after that first case she had worked on an airplane – one where a man was murdered on a plane as he became increasingly delirious and aggressive as the altitude ate away at his temporary sanity – she had vowed to stop taking planes.

But most of all, she just needed the length of the car trip. To sort out her feelings. She was just bothered that her feelings felt no more sorted out than they had the moment she'd left Vegas.

Turning at the exit, she made short work of the directions, finding the convenience store in no time.

She quickly found herself returning to her established habits, as she scanned through every aisle, skipping only the section for incontinence. So immersed was she in the prices on an individual children's toothbrush that she didn't notice the presence behind her.

"Um, miss?"

Jumping in surprise, she whirled around, hands coming out in front of her, as she registered the convenience store employee staring at her wide-eyed and slightly terrified.

"Uh, miss, is there anything in particular you're looking for, or anything we can help you with?" he asked nervously.

She just shook her head, irritated at the distraction.

He retreated nervously back to the store counter. Sara, once again immersed in toothbrush prices, failed to notice as he picked up the phone and dialed anxiously, even missing the second 1 digit.

* * *

Sara finally made her way through the contents of the entire store. She wandered. She meandered. She didn't buy anything. She didn't even think anything was amiss until the lights flickered outside the store. They were familiar lights – ones she was more than accustomed to after what felt like a lifetime in Vegas.

Suddenly, it was no longer a ghost town she occupied. The expanse of highway felt less empty. The one thing that was empty was the store. The employees had mysteriously disappeared. Then she noticed the men walking into the building. Had there been a murder at the convenience store?

"Miss," the officer approached her cautiously, in much the same way as the employee had, but with the addition of a lightly – but alertly – clutched gun.

"Hi, officer," she said confidently. "Is there a problem? I'm off-duty –"

The officer eyed her curiously. "We had a report of suspicious behavior."

She lost herself in pondering potential sources of evidence, when she realized that she had been the only customer in the store. She looked at her watch and was surprised. She had been in the convenience store for an hour. So she had been the only customer there for the last hour.

She retraced the events of the last hour, finally settling on the employee. He had stared at her suspiciously. _Suspiciously, as if _she_ were suspicious. _Finally, it dawned on her.

"Uh, no. There's no problem. I just… had a rough day."

The officer's grip on his gun tightened. She could read the agitation in his face. "Uh… we're gonna need to check you for weapons."

Sara nodded dismally, in humiliation, at the implication. The officer tried to be professional and courteous, but the roaming hands still disturbed her. She knew it was standard procedure. Most of all, she was frustrated with herself for earning such a "standard procedure" -- for putting herself in such a position. Breaking out of her dissociative daze, she realized quickly just how suspicious her actions must be. _I've been totally out of it._

Finally aware as she was, it came as no surprise when the officer pulled out the breathalyzer. She blew with both shame and relief, for knowing how logical the procedure was given the circumstances, but also that nothing negative would result. Setting the breathalyzer down, the officer took a step back.

Sara could tell he was clueless as to the next move. Taking a small step forward, he spoke again.

"I'm sorry. What was your name?"

"Sara. Sara Sidle." She could see the bells ring in his head, as he tried to figure out where he'd heard that name before. _Probably the kidnapping. Natalie. The miniature killer._

Sara shivered inadvertently, remembering that terrifying night.

"Ms. Sidle, you said that you were a cop, right?"

Sara seated him with a confused look.

"You said you were off-duty," he responded to the stare apologetically.

She nodded again.

He stepped away to speak to his partner, a late middle-aged man with a full head of white hair that reminded Sara of Santa Claus – not that she had ever believed in Santa Claus – who Sara had just noticed. She realized he must have been at the scene for at least five minutes, and wondered how it was she didn't notice him.

She could hear the first officer – his name tag read 'M. Lewis' – talking to his partner. "Look up a Sara Sidle. I need to speak with her supervisor." She could see the ensuing phone call – probably finding Griss's number – and, most painfully – the conversation with Grissom.

Lewis returned, giving Sara an apologetic look. "Your supervisor wants to talk to you."

Sara didn't know why she looked up to the ceiling with annoyance, letting her shoulders sink back, but she knew that she didn't want to be talking to Grissom at the moment.

"Sara?" His voice was relatively unconcerned. Trusting. She wasn't a child. She wasn't a baby, or a fragile thing to be broken. She spoke back calmly.

"Nothing, Griss. It's just a misunderstanding." She knew Grissom would believe that. He had no reason to doubt her psychological well-being. Well, maybe he did, but he wasn't showing it.

She could imagine him nodding into the phone. "Okay. I'm sure you have it under control."

"Thanks Gil."

"Talk to you later, hon."

She handed the officer's phone back to him. He looked grateful that she hadn't used an excessive amount of his minutes. It was hardly the police norm to be excessively loquacious, and Gil Grissom certainly lived up to that. Even his trademark quotes were generally short, and his phone calls even more so.

"Ma'am, officer to officer, you're actin' pretty suspicious."

Sara nodded.

"You kinda' had the workers here freaked out. They thought you were gonna rob the place or something.'"

Sara nodded again, ashamed to see her behavior frightening civilians.

"You may want to head out o' the store; be a little less suspicious."

Sara nodded again, red growing on her cheeks. "Will do."

She headed out the door anti-climactically, head bent in embarrassment. She knew that she needed a new escape. The officer's systematic procedures reminded her of a long ago abandoned escape. After all, she wasn't on duty, nor would she be for quite a while.

* * *

Sara stepped back into the car, unsure. She could still taste the tequila on her tongue. It had been a mediocre margarita. By her third glass, she'd switched to straight tequila, and later to mezcat. Either way, it was still Agave. She'd always been a sucker for the Agave cactus. It was a symbol of the desert she was leaving behind.

She knew she was past the point of driving anywhere, with a blood alcohol content far beyond rationality, let alone a legal drinking level. A cab was useless, because she was taking a road trip and she'd need her car back anyways.

And she was tired… so tired… She barely missed the horn on her steering wheel as her head brushed down in exhaustion, succumbing quickly to light butterfly snores.

* * *

Sara, still the scientist, would describe what had happened to her in the last few weeks, and, really, the leading months, as a reaction. No more complex, nor any more her fault.

She couldn't help it.

Her parents bore the same problems, the same addictions to that trace of feeling, gratification – the need to seek out some sort of sufficient meaning in life that would keep her going.

She had never had faith in people. Never. Maybe when she was younger. Maybe before the yelling started. Before the smoking started. Before the drinking started.

Tracing the lines on her right hand, she tried to return her mind – and maybe even state of mind – to better times. She tried to remember them, but she couldn't. And as her long, delicate fingernail followed worried lines down the soft skin, finally she could at least feel _something_. Without the sterile latex glove, she imagined being human – _feeling_ human. Feeling alive. But the latex stood in her way. The thick, unnatural exterior could always hide her humanity – her inherent human feelings. She had known then and there – as she finished processing Marlon West's jail cell – that it was time to take the gloves off.

She had no faith, and, with it, no trust in those around her. She saw the world for what it was – a dismal system, without order. Theories of string and relativity applied, but only to lightly bind the vacuum she lived in. And that vacuum scared her. Living with her parents, she had learned that the world held little rhyme or reason, that the only meaning of life was self-preservation, and that the only thing stopping basic human survival instinct from overruling humanity was the law.

Laws, to Sara Sidle, were the meaning of life. They were the order that bound humanity, prevented it from descending into a chaos of anarchy and animal instincts.

She could trust the law, but she could not trust people. She knew that, ultimately, they would always be out to save and help their own asses in the long run.

And that knowledge brought her both relief and fear. Answers laid out in front of her, easily. She had no need to find the rhyme and reason in life when she knew that there simply was none.

Yet the knowledge also brought her pain.

With no answers to search for, she had no quest in life – no inherent need for meaning or reason – because she knew that such things didn't exist. The pleasant coincidences – the little things – that brought out the superstition and faith in people, had no appeal to her, and without their rewards, she had no joy.

Unable to find satisfaction in the intangible, she sought the tangible – the traces of instant gratification that suited her best – fulfillment of the most primal human needs.

In her joyless world, she needed an escape. She needed to escape Vegas. The latex hid her – shrouded her in objectivity – from Sin City, and all of its embodiments of the coldest, hardest human instincts.

But she wanted to stop hiding.

She needed to escape.

It was, really, a reaction. The world was cold and heartless, and Sara Sidle knew that. She knew that better than most. She was a cynic, in all senses of the world, and as much as she had, at one point, admired Grissom's belief that knowledge brings happiness, she wished she didn't know quite so much. She wished she could go on believing that the world was good. Yet the more knowledge she gained, especially over the course of her job, the more faith she lost in the world.

And she needed that little trace of faith back. She needed to be able to _believe _in something. But she didn't know what, or how. So she fell on her knowledge, looking instead to the empty joys that satisfied the most primal of human instincts. While she couldn't believe or find happiness in the simple coincidences, the beautiful moments in which she would always see falsities, she still needed happiness.

So she drowned her sorrows, escaping the cruel world yet again.

It was a reaction. The world pushed Sara, with primal human cruelty, so she would push back, with equal cruelty. _Objects acted upon push back with equal force._

After finishing processing Marlon West's jail cell, she had pulled off the latex for the last time, sticking it in the pocket of her uniform before tucking the uniform neatly into Ronnie Lake's locker, with the ironic message of 'Good Luck' out for the idealistic new CSI to see.

* * *

Sara woke up slowly, grateful to Agave cacti for a sweet, dreamless night. She was less grateful for the hangover, but it was worth it. It was the first night in weeks that she hadn't woken up with a start after horrid dreams she barely remembered.

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Thanks for reading! Reviews are love ;)

Per usual, review (and, obviously, say so) if you think it should be more than a oneshot. Again, any title suggestions would be greatly appreciated; I'm not happy with this one, but have yet to concoct a better one.

Thanks!

Harper


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